On one hand planners are told to think beyond the box, but on the other hand they are told these are the new ‘rules’ and that they should be followed.

ME: Drive-thrus were removed from the zoning districts used in the downtown core and in many of the BIAs a few years back. You cannot open a new fast food restaurant with a drive-through in the core today.

Urbanrat: Crawford and Wyandotte is not in the core. That new Tim Hortons also took quite a bit of negotiation. We are getting better at this and recent changes to the Planning Act (followed by changes to our Official Plan) give the municipality more control over site plan and building design.

Windsor still has a blue collar mentality to it, and it is hard to convince Council that this is the way things should be ;) I wish we had the Vancouver model of planning. Council approves the policies and administration implements the policies by approving or rejecting development applications (with no chance of appeal). But that is the planner bias in me talking.

The mentality in the Greater Golden Horseshoe is completely different. By no means am I saying that the municipalities agree on every issue, but they understand that private investment is key to improving their municipalities and that public investment in infrastructure is a must.

It makes me laugh and cry when I hear King Francis talk about GreenLink as the next best thing for Windsor. Does he not realize that what he is supporting is a below-grade road whose job is to move vehicles as efficiently (re: quickly) as possible from a mystical third crossing to a six-lane limited-access divided highway just outside the City limits?

Yes, Windsor will get more parks or natural land in an area teeming with parks and natural lands, and yes, we will get a short-term shot in the economic arm, but the road itself does nothing for Windsor.

It won’t make it easier to get across this city. It won’t make it easier to go southbound on Provincial at Cabana. It won’t make it easier to get to the 401 in the east end. It won’t improve east-west access to East Riverside.

http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda/index.cfm?page_id=7&bpn=779129&ts=2008-02-15%2020:00:48.0

and click on the “Watch Video” to the above right of Pupatello’s link, you can see the full interview there. Steve does ask her about Windsor.

Drive-through ban eyed for city vehicles

http://www.thestar.com/article/303944

Personally I don’t want to see a drive-thru restaurant in the core and that goes for MacDonalds, the new Tim Horton’s at Crawford and Wyandotte which is almost 100% drive in or drive-thru.

Thank you Vincent for writing far more elegantly about the Golden Horsehoe area and the surge of manufacturing that is taking place there and the massive infrastructure that is NOW being built!

Did anyone catch Sandra Pupatello on TVO’s Agenda program last night? She stated that all the infrastructure for the Windsor border area will be done by 2013! But she didn’t elaborate!

What practical reasons Chris? People won’t buy a burger there if they can’t have a drive-thru? Why do other cities not have this issue of drive-thru’s in their downtown but Windsor must have drive-thrus in their’s? That is a bit of a defeatist attitude isn’t it? I have stated for a while that we should have more on street parking but it has fallen on deaf ears.

The more we cater to cars and ignore the impact that the car and subsequently sprawl has on our city the more in debt and the higher the taxes we will pay. That, is a fact. As it stands we can barely afford our infrastructure now but we continue to want to placate the demand for sprawl and the laziness of people in Windsor. Any reason as to why Windsor is one of the fattest cities in Canada? What do we as a city do to combat that statistic? I have offered suggestions. What about you?